March 2011

This morning around eight o'clock the building I live in began to fill with smoke. The contents of a cell on the first floor was ablaze...

I watched from the floor above as a handful of correction officers scrambled to the scene, while one of them ran to get the nearest fire extinguisher that was in a key opened lockbox at the end of the tier. They had the fire out within about five minutes but the smoke was everywhere. I had to open my own cell window to get the smoke out of my room.As it turned out, the man who occupied the now burned out cell had set the fire himself as a "call for help." He had walked away from his living area after igniting some papers and other items, probably with a cigarette lighter.Later in the day I learned that several days earlier he had gotten into a fistfight with a man who is supposed to be a high-ranking member of a gang. I have no idea what the fight was about, and no one was seriously hurt. In fact the officers didn't even know about it. But as things go, the general rule in here is that when you get into a fight with one member of a gang, you're going to end up battling all of them whenever they decide to jump you in a revenge style payback.So the inmate who was in that cell decided he needed to make a quick exit from a potentially violent situation by purposely burning up his own belongings. Because once prison officials determined the reason for the blaze and who set it, he was promptly escorted in handcuffs to the facility's Special Housing Unit, more commonly known as "The Box."Unfortunately for the fire-setter, he is going to get charged with arson. He will probably spend at least a year in isolation, maybe longer. Even though he wanted to avoid what he deemed to be an inevitably violent confrontation, his method of bringing attention to the fact that he was in trouble with fellow inmates is not going to bide well at the disciplinary hearing he must face in the near future. He's in a no-win situation.D.B.